Maria Connolly, LPC
Emotional intelligence is twice as valuable as IQ in the business world, since the emotional health of the team directly impacts productivity, motivation, engagement and loyalty. This means a person has the emotional intelligence that encompasses an ability to 1) identify and manage one’s own emotions, 2) identify and understand someone else’s emotions, and 3) relate well to others personally and professionally even under the most stressful situations. This requires that a person be self-aware, self-regulating and empathetic. These relationship-based skills are ones wherein women certainly excel.
Many women have come to believe that emotional well-being means feeling happy, calm, confident, and positive most of the time. So when anxiety appears, when grief lingers, or when uncertainty settles in, they assume something is wrong.
But what if nothing is wrong?
What if the real measure of well-being isn't how you feel on any given day, but how deeply connected you remain to yourself while your feelings come and go?
“Do less? I’m behind as it is, and I can’t afford to slow down for… so many reasons.” I get it. Slowing down can feel incredibly uncomfortable.
I’ve had clients tell me they’ve tried sitting outside for five minutes, but they spend the whole time mentally writing emails, replaying yesterday's conversation, or organizing tomorrow's schedule. Their bodies are on the patio, but their attention is somewhere else entirely. It's what capable minds have learned to do. There’s no room for the art of noticing.
Right now, many women are carrying accumulated stress and are living in a constant state of emotional activation. Deadlines, family demands, unstable systems, relationship stress, financial pressure, endless information streams, plus a background pressure to keep holding it together. It adds up. You may feel like you’re handling everything on the outside while quietly carrying a storm on the inside. But what really is causing this emotional overload, and how can you learn to master your emotions rather than them being the master over you?
You know that feeling… you're in the boardroom, about to challenge a flawed strategy. Or at dinner with your partner, needing to name what's not working. Or on the phone with a client whose expectations have crossed a line. That uncomfortable moment when you need to speak up, push back, say what needs saying. And suddenly, inexplicably, the words stick in your throat, and you can’t say no.
It's not that you don't know what to say. You've rehearsed it. You've coached others through similar situations. You've built an entire career on your competence, your clarity, your ability to navigate complexity. But in the moments that matter most, when something important is at stake, your voice disappears. Or worse, it comes out apologetic, over-explained, and smaller than you are.
For high-achieving women, this particular challenge cuts deep. You've learned to excel in almost every arena, yet when it comes to protecting your own boundaries, advocating for your own needs, or simply saying no to someone you care about, the words stick in your throat like they're glued there. You freeze. You fold. You override what you know is true because speaking it feels impossibly hard.
Every so often, a client says something that shifts the room. Not because the insight is shocking, but because it’s so honest it lands in the body before it ever lands in the mind. Years ago, a client offered such a profound truth about emotionally unavailable people. I still think about it today.
She said, “I keep choosing people who are emotionally self-focused, and I finally understand why. My parents were the same way. They couldn’t really see me. So I learned to disconnect from my own feelings. And now I realize I’ve developed that same self-focused quality inside myself.”
I watched her face as she said it. Something in her settled, almost as if she finally caught up with a part of herself that had been waiting to be seen. As a somatic therapist, I know that these patterns don't just live in our thoughts or beliefs. They live in our bodies, in our nervous systems, in the way we breathe (or don't breathe), in the tension we carry, in our capacity (or incapacity) to feel our own feelings.